Getting started

Pray!

First things first – PRAY! Before your start planning and dreaming up ideas for your National Prayer Weekend, take time out to bring the weekend, your ideas and community before God. If there’s a team of you, ask God to highlight the strengths He has given you all. Some people might be great organisers. Others could be brilliant at reaching out to invite people to pray and someone else might be looking for an opportunity to be really creative.

Plan

Talk about new ways to pray and how you might host your event. Where could you pray? Who with? Maybe you want to advertise a morning of prayer in your church, or perhaps you want to take to the streets and lead a prayer walk around your town or plan a 24/7 praise and prayer event. It doesn’t matter if you want to keep things simple with a prayer morning in church or want to go big and plan 48 hours of non-stop prayer, inviting people to camp out in your church! The National Prayer Weekend is about bringing communities together and introducing people to prayer who might have never thought about it before, so think outside the box. How are you going to reach out to those around you?

Resources

Once you have joined in and registered with the National Prayer Weekend you will be able to access free, easily customisable resources. They are available for you to use as much or as little as you would like. Sermon outlines help you get your whole church involved; you can give people prayer invitations and letter templates, inviting them to reply with prayer requests, and a promotional flyer encourages people to get talking about your weekend of prayer.

We also have a selection of fantastic books that are ideal for introducing people around you to prayer during the National Prayer Weekend:

1. Specifically written for the National Prayer Weekend by Carla Harding and Pete Greig from the 24-7 Prayer team, Living on a Prayeris a short introduction to prayer for everyone. The 16-page booklet offers a contemporary and honest look at how effective prayer can be in our everyday lives, introducing readers to prayer perhaps for the very first time.

2. The popular booklet Why Pray?by Canon J.John, written about the Lord’s Prayer, is also available to buy (available from May 2017).

3. There are two books perfect for children, illustrating the different ways of talking to God, the reasons why we pray and the how to’s of prayer: Pens Special Prayer(ideal for children aged 3 to 6) and Topz Tips for Prayer(for children aged 7–11).

These resources are available for you to order and offer to your congregation or to the people you are praying for. They invite people to think about prayer in a way that relates to everyone’s ordinary lives.

Have a look under the Resources page for a choice of many fantastic free resources from the following organisations supporting the National Prayer Weekend: 24-7 Prayer, Gather, Evangelical Alliance, Neighbourhood Prayer Network, HOPE and Prayer Spaces in Schools.